1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing unit and, more particularly, to a data flow type of information processing unit in which an input field of an instruction being processed by the unit is given information indicating whether the operand data to be used by the instruction is available. Operand data is tranferred independently of, but as specified by instructions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a Von Neumann type information processing unit, the execution of an instruction is under what is called sequential control. However, in the data flow type of information processing unit, an instruction can be executed when data necessary therefor is available and the sequence of the execution of instructions can be freely determined by the hardware. In addition, a plurality of instructions can be executed in parallel. Therefore, the data flow type information processing unit is, for example, well suited for the implementation of a vector processor which executes vector instructions in parallel.
However, the application of the configuration of the conventional data flow type information processing unit to an information processing unit for scientific computations encounters various problems. One of the major problems is that in the prior art data flow type of information processing unit, an instruction and its data (values) are mixed into one packet or block for transfer. Because of this, in the conventional data flow type of information processing unit, a hardware circuit for moving an instruction and a circuit for transferring data cannot be separated, which offsets one of the advantages that break what is called the Von Neumann bottleneck.